Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson on writing a phenomenon.
What do you think of when you hear the words “Fighting Fantasy”?
Perhaps you talked about it with friends in the schoolyard, swapping strategies, comparing notes.
You almost certainly remembered the deaths.
Whatever you remember of it, the effect the books had is undeniable.
In fact, few people are as decorated in the games industry.
And this year, Fighting Fantasy turns 40 years old, just like me.
And they’re coming outtoday- Thursday, 1st September.
And it was issue one.
For one of them to somehow make their way onto Gary Gygax’s desk is astonishing.
And it was the search for something new that would fuel them.
Ian Livingstone recalls what happened next: “He wrote to us and said, ‘Love your magazine.
Here’s a new game I invented - what do you think?'”
And predictably, they loved it.
“Steve and I became obsessed,” Livingstone says.
But they couldn’t afford much.
“We ordered six copies - that’s all the money we had in the world.”
Still, this impressed Gygax.
Whatever it was, he liked them.
“John’s bedroom was like a workshop,” says Livingstone.
Peake was an engineer, a craftsman, making boards for games and other things.
Livingston, then, means it literally.
Games Workshop was born.
So they turned up and milled around in the street outside their flat looking for it.
Their landlord wasn’t pleased, though.
The change came when Livingstone and Jackson decided to do Games Workshop full-time, and throw everything at it.
John Peake, however, didn’t want to.
In their excitement, however, they hadn’t thought it through.
But it turns out the bank manager wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about Dungeons & Dragons as they were.
“And so you go into the bank manager and say, ‘Hey, we got this great game.
Still, they made the most of it.
“We called it living the dream,” says Livingstone, smiling.
It was on Dalling Road in Hammersmith, and it opened 1st April 1978.
And the rest, really, is history.
What if they could find a way to make it appealing to a wider audience?
They really wanted to share that experience with people.
That was their chance.
The idea of an interactive book was preposterous and no one would ever buy them.
So three years later, Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out.”
Now, if you’ve ever read Fighting Fantasy books, you’ll know how complex they can be.
It’s hard enough keeping track of where you’re going as a player.
But the actual method involved in putting them together isn’t as complicated as it might seem.
And it’s remained largely unchanged since the very beginning.
But the technique hasn’t changed."
But he writes it into a computer now, whereas he used to use a fountain pen.
And they had a novel way of deciding it.
“It was a good way of sorting out disputes, really.
But he always used to win.”
Firetop Mountain would, however, be the only book they would co-write.
“Nothing’s going to ever destroy our friendship,” Livingstone declares.
“We’ve been friends now since 1966 so that’s quite a landmark period of time.
We always put the friendship ahead of any possible disagreements.”
“And that was having quite an impact on our sanity.”
From there, they’d head into video games of course.
“But really it’s just a spoof gentleman’s club,” says Livingstone.
“We’re just having fun.”
And Fighting Fantasy would continue.
And here we are, 40 years later.
But what makes a particularly good Fighting Fantasy book?
But arguably the most memorable feature is the deaths.
“As you’ll probably remember, you die a lot in Fighting Fantasy,” Jackson says.
“Steve’s Games books were always more difficult than mine,” Livingstone jumps in.
“I think he delighted in torturing people more than I did.”
And it would worry them, the difficulty being what it was.
But in doing so he touches upon something else that’s so important to the series: the artwork.
“It’s an epic,” says Livingstone, plainly.
“Fantastic, wasn’t it?”
Jackson says of Inkle’s work.
That, then, is the brief story of how Fighting Fantasy came to be.
“I haven’t really stopped, I’ve just slowed up a bit,” Livingstone says.
So it’s never ending.
“So it’s an ongoing thing.
And for me,” he says, “it’s never going to end.
There’s definitely going to be another one if the public still wants it.
“Thanks very much and may your stamina never fail.”
It’s due out this autumn via Unbound.
